I told the manger at the A.C. Moore that I work at that I would like to do a polymer clay demo at the next craft festival that the store does. There is one this Saturday but I would not have the time to come up with anything. I am not sure what all the demo’s need to contain or how long they should last. The craft festivals are four hours long but I am not really sure how the demo’s are done. I will have to find out on Saturday.
I do know that I want to have a varity of beginning techniques that any one could do. I also want to show how much you can do with polymer clay. I will see how much space I can use during the demo and figure out how to display many of the things that I have done. I want to show case my own personal work but also show others that they can do it as well.
I have a lot of thinking and planning to do. After doing a few demo’s I want to start teaching some classes at AC Moore as well. I will have to do even more planning to get those done. I am not sure it I just want to do kid’s classes or adult’s classes or both. Lots to think about.
I have had my first barrette damaged in shipping. It happens and I have always expected it. That wasn’t the problem. I have the policy that if something that a customer did not like about what they ordered or if the barrette was damaged that I would replace it or even refund the money that they had spent. I even have that on my website. I will always stand behind what I sell and make.
What happened in this case is that I had made an error in making the replacement of the broken barrette. I had “remembered” what the costumer had ordered wrong. I re-made what I thought was right and sent it to the costumer with a free barrette as a gift. They arrived safely and in one piece. Much to my dismay, I recieve a note form the costumer pointing out the error. I was already to mail the correct replacement to her when I saw that she had placed an order for another barrette. I was very surprised about that but also very pleased. I sent both of the barrettes to her today and am hoping that they arrive safely.
I also sent her a note of apology about the error. I had exchanged e-mail with her about the mix up and all but I feel that going the extra step for a costumer is what you should do. It only took a few minutes to hand write a note.
I can always have the best product on the market but if I mistreat one costumer, I actually lose many more. That is “Marketing 101″ in my book.
Over the last couple of days I have agreed to do a challenge one on of the forums I am active in and a swap on another.
The challenge is monthly and mainly to get us to try different things with polymer clay. The first on is to make a single flower cane using a skinner blend. That is the technique that I have used in making the flower canes that I have made so far. I am going to try to do something different with it but I am not sure what yet. I may make a daisy or some similar type of flower. This challenge is for the Bead & Button Community Forum (Making Jewelry, Polymer Clay) and is going to be fun. There are very talented artists there.
The cane swap is for a flower petal cane and a leave cane. There are groups of five, so that for each group you sign up for you make five petals and five leaves. They can be out of the same cane or you can do different ones. I am doing two groups and am planning on doing two different petals and leaves but making enough for five 3 inch sections of each. I am going to be doing different types of petals then I have. I am also not going to use the petals to make that flower cane for the challenge. I already know how I am going to do the leaves. I am planing on making them out of fall colors instead of greens like I have. The flower petals are going to be more of a challenge. I am thinking of doing something similar to tiger lilies.
Imagine my surprise to find my website mentioned on a blog in Hebrew. That is what happened last week when I was checking out the tracking stats for my site. I try to find out where the referrals are coming from, just to make sure I am not getting unwanted spams. Today the same artist put the comment on Polymeri Online which is in English. Check her site http://polymerionline.blogspot.com/ . She has a lot of really cool pictures and links, as well as some beautiful work of her own. She is Iris Mishly in Israel. While you are at her blog, check out her pictures on flickr of the fish that she painted on faces. They are really neat. Thank you very much, Iris, for the kind words.
I posted my fish cane yesterday and today I have two barrettes made from it.
This one I call “Kissing Fish”.
This one I titled “Be Different.”
I like how the larger fish turned out. I have to work on the reducing of the cane so that the smaller ones look as good. I made two more fish canes today. The first one is of a Koi and the second is similar to these but with different colored body, fins and tail.